Saint of the Month: St. Martin of Tours / San Martin Caballero

Louis Galloche. “A Scene From the Life of St. Martin.” 1737. Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) Image Library. Public domain.

November’s saint for the Saint of the Month Box is St. Martin of Tours, aka San Martin Caballero, whose feast day in the Roman Catholic calendar is November 11th.

He was a 4th century bishop in Tours but had once been a soldier, and this is how he’s almost always pictured in the art of Western Christendom – a soldier on horseback cutting his cloak in half to clothe a beggar. He had a reputation for miracles even while he was still living, and he was one of the first non-martyred saints to be venerated so widely.

Officially, he’s the patron saint of beggars, the cavalry (and equestrians generally), innkeepers, soldiers, and geese, and he is invoked against poverty and alcoholism.

In popular practice, however, especially in the Latin American tradition, you’ll find his image in restaurants, hotels, bars, shops, and anywhere else where the proprietors rely at least in part on strangers/passing travelers for their income. You’ll also find his image — and especially his horse’s horseshoe — serving as a fairly broad-based good luck token in all kinds of contexts. Folks call on him when they need a job, pray for his intercession to protect them from evil and change their bad luck, carry his package amulet or bundle when they’re gambling, hang his image in their homes for general luck and prosperity, even build a shrine with his horseshoe when they need a better place to live (and they are sure to give the shrine pride of place when they move into the new digs!)

You can get your very own cool box of San Martin Caballero stuff in the Saint of the Month box for November at Seraphin Station. They usually contain something you don’t already have because I’ve collected a ton of cool stuff over the course of my lifetime working with saints and spirits, and they will usually contain some item or product that you can’t get elsewhere or otherwise.

Learn more or order your Saint of the Month box now at Seraphin Station.

June Community Spiritual Services; Bonus Rewards Points

Community Honey Jars

June community honey jars begin Monday, June 14th. There’s one for love/relationships and one for prosperity/income (which is Pay What You Can). I’ve set it up where you can book through Etsy, too, through the process is a bit clumsier and less straightforward there, sorry to say.

Planetary Work

Mercury Retrograde remediation and the Lucky Stars Sweet Jar for Jupiter in Pisces both have “rolling enrollment,” meaning you can join in at any time during the transit as long as you see spots still open, as I’ll be working some aspect or phase of these continuously.

St. Anthony of Padua 9-Day Service

St. Anthony’s feast day is June 13th, on which night I’ll commence a nine-day vigil, novena and chaplet service.

I’m not sure there’s anything St. Anthony has never been petitioned for by a devotee, but I imagine most petitions are still for finding lost things, up to and including lost people, which by extension results in his being tapped to return a wayward lover or reconcile a couple after a rough patch. He can deal with less literal stuff, too, e.g. if you feel like you’ve lost the plot or you cannot locate any more fucks to give.

Learn more about St. Anthony, including how he’s increasingly petitioned for love-drawing work these days, at my St. Anthony guide at Big Lucky Hoodoo. Or learn more about the service and book your spot now at SeraphinStation.com.

Community altar work services focus on a particular goal or area and have a limited number of “seats” for each working. They are a great compromise between big workings open to any number of folks (inexpensive but with little customization available) and hiring a worker to do 100% custom, private services just for you (completely tailored to you but often considerably more expensive since the costs of time and materia magica are not being shared by more than one person).

Also available: 3X bonus rewards points through midnight Central time on Friday, June 11th. The rewards program is free to join and pretty simple to use – read more here.

new formulas

Newly listed oil formulas:

Marriage oil – for those trying to get married, and for blessing an already existing marriage

St. Patrick oil — for working with Irish ancestors, for protection from snakes, and for calling on the blessings of St. Patrick

Dream Vision oil – for prophetic dreams, clear dreams, and better dream recall

Get A Job oil – to help you get that job!

Peace oil – smooths over troubles in home and family, assuages hurt feelings in relationships, brings an aura of peace and tranquilitiy

Stay With Me oil – keep your lover around – and faithful

Kiss Me Quick oil – looking for Mr./Ms. Right Now? This oil is for you.

Abramelin oil – Biblical formula (not the Crowley/Mathers formula — NOT edible.)

Ketubah oil – This is a biblical anointing oil in the blessing family, containing rare and fragrant henna blossom essential oil among other appropriate oils and herbs. Use for altar work for marriage or engagement, to ritually seal covenants and agreements (either with yourself or between two or more people), and as a reminder of the union of the soul with the Spirit. Some folks use this as an anointing oil when they perform weddings and handfastings, or in spellwork related to their marriages or relationships.

Holy Fire oil – This is a biblical oil in the blessing family, containing hyssop among other appropriate herbs and oils.
Use for altar work for blessing, cleansing, and purging yourself of spiritual ickiness. I find this blend very useful when you’re facing one of those places in life where one door closes and another opens, to help you cut harmful ties to the past, make account of and restitution for things you are setting aside and leaving behind, and asking for guidance and blessing as you begin your new endeavor. This oil would be good to use when your divorce is final, when you finally break up with that irresistible bad boy or girl, when you decide to quit smoking, or when you begin a magical retreat or new spiritual practice.

Three Kings oil -If you’ve been reading my blog, you may recall that I continue my family’s old tradition of presenting the Infant Jesus with a little gold-covered casket of frankincense and myrrh at the Feast of the Epiphany. This oil is made with resins from January’s presentation ceremony. Each bottle contains a tiny bit of 24 kt gold dust as well. Use for altar work for money and success, for protection, and for healing and drawing blessings. This is one of those multi-purpose oils that no hoodoo cabinet should be without.

Remember that all my oils, powders, and baths are available from my website too, often at a substantial discount. If there’s not an operable cart for the page you want, just write me and I can send you a paypal invoice for the things you want.

another trick for getting a job – st. anthony

St. Anthony is fo’ work. St. Anthony if yo’ wish tuh find lost articles or yo’ wanta git a job. All right, lak if yo’ got an idea of what person yo’ wanta work fo’, yo’ git de name of dis person an’ yo’ write it three times. Put chure name straight across three times above his. Den yo’ take an’ you fold it three [demonstrates], make three folds lakdis – dis way, dat way, an’ yo’ turn it dat way.

(Fold it towards you.)
Dat’s right, always towards yo’.
(You fold it three times – when you begin to fold it, you fold it sideways three times.)
See, yo’ fold it lak dis [demonstrates].
(Once, twice, and the third time you fold it toward you.)
Ex-actly.
(You fold it twice sidewise like that?)
But not from you.
(And the third you fold it to you?)
Dat’s right.

Now, yo’ put dis in a small, any kind of bag or in any kind of a piece of cloth. Put it in yore right-foot shoe.

Now, dere’s a powder dat chew use – ah make it mahself, but ah git de ingredients from a druggist roun’ heah. Ah don’t know if he’ll give yo’ de ingredients or not. But anyway, ah git de ingredients from him an’ den ah mix it. Dere’s steel dust in it, dere’s cinnamon in it, dere’s powder of de cactus – powdered cactus.

Yo’ mix dose three ingredients together an’ yo’ put dat in yore shoe, jes’ a good pinch, an’ dat’s gonna bring yo’ all de success in de way of gittin’ a job dat chew want.

(Do you have any special name for that dust?)
Oh, yes. Ah call it luck for jobs – it’s a grayish-lookin’ dust.

(Well, now, does St. Anthony come into that any way?)
Yes, St. Anthony is de one – ah’m fixin’ tuh come tuh him about dat candle. Den yo’ git a brown candle. Yo’ light it befo’ St. Anthony an’ make yo’ promise, if yo’ git dis job, yo’ll give so much fo’ his bread fo’ de po’. Yo’ jes’ go an’ drap it in de church or somepin lak dat. An’ when yo’ git dis job, don’t fo’git tuh do dat.

Dat’s essential dat yo’ keep dat promise. Yo’ll see, yo’ git mo’ work den yo’ want.

(Do you use a brown candle for any special reason for St. Anthony?)
On ‘counts his brown habit.

– Algiers, LA, Madame Lindsey; Hyatt Vol 2, pp. 1503-1504

a shoe trick for getting a job

A recent email asks for ideas on finding work. Here’s a trick for when you talk to the person who does the hiring (it would likely have to be adapted for use in a larger corporation or in a headhunting situation):

Get his name – you gotta get his name, the boss’ name. Write his name down nine times. Put cinnamon and sugar and put it in your left-foot shoe and walk to his door. If he don’t take you in three days, walk there in the ninth day and ask him for a job. Well, you got him under your feet, you got him wanting for you.

Hyatt Vol. 2, p 1408

The cinnamon and sugar are typical for sweetening and attracting work, the use of a shoe is typical for job hunting (as well as domination and a few other situations that don’t apply here), and the name paper is typical of all kinds of work. So if you didn’t know the boss’s name, you could substitute "the person who does the hiring" or some such phrase, or the interviewer if you have to go through a few rounds of interviews to get to the person who does the hiring.